Comment on Australia’s Social Media Ban Is Isolating Kids With Disabilities—Just Like Critics Warned
shirro@aussie.zone 3 days ago
Back in the old days we used to run forums and mailing lists for people of various interests. People used to make their own little idiosyncratic places full of creativity. I miss it so much.
Then the big US social media companies came in and took everyone away and the old Internet became a ghost town. Lots of online communities died to be replaced by highly predatory foreign companies.
I don’t know why we should listen to people defending predatory social media but everyone ignored us old people telling them that these walled gardens were going to kill the Internet with massive corporate influence. Everyone is so fucking stupid now. Technical people can’t even do technical shit anymore. I hate it.
Back in the old days we used to run forums and mailing lists for people of various interests. People used to make their own little idiosyncratic places full of creativity. I miss it so much.
Me too, friend. Me too.
The central reason why we can’t have it anymore is that governments around the world have regulated it away. One example being what the article in the OP is about. 🙁
Governments have regulated that we can’t have forums, mailing lists? What about special interest bulletin boards? I read the article but I didn’t pick up on that.
Nah, they didn’t. The legislation is bad but it was driven by research into mobile phone/social media addiction and harms to teenagers. There is a bit f a satanic panic angle but there is enough substance that I think we have to take it seriously. The target is algorithmic addiction machines run by huge predatory companies. Any impact on sites like aussie.zone is unintended and nobody cares about a self hosted forum or list for neurodivergent kids.
The problem is people are fucking stupid and they all jumped to evil shit like Facebook and everything else died. I have to go out of my way to find out anything in my local community with sports, school etc because people are moronic sheep. The government is targeting the right bunch of unethical cunts even if they are not doing it well.
Of course. That’s my understanding too. Just wondering why this guy claims message boards and mailing lists have been regulated away and supported that by citing this article.
Yes, if they pass laws creating liability for their operators, or regulating that they have to verify ages or identities, etc.
Except that would mean forums like Steam or whirlpool would require people to verify their age is over 16 before posting but as far as I can tell they have no such requirements.
It seems to me that people can still quite easily set up forums for special interest topics and groups without issue from the government.
Agreed, completely. I used Facebook for all of 9 months before I did the self reflection and realised that it was like voluntarily poisoning myself and got out in, I think, 2012 or so. I was unemployed at the time and it became clear to me that it was doing bad things to me mentally and I was developing an addiction to the scroll.
Imagine if you would that instead of this garbage social media ban on kids we had some serious investigation into the corrosive nature of these social media orgs and they were held accountable for every bit of “experimentation” they conducted without informed consent. While we were at it we could have maybe whipped up some regulstion to curb the gambling industry.
The only people I have personally talked with who say the teen social media ban is unambiguously good just so happen to be the same people whose brains have been completely cooked by a combination of Facebook and Sky News. I kid you not when I say that the last person to loudly assert social media ban good also told me about the time he threatened bodily harm to a man who was wearing a mask immediately after Covid lockdowns were lifted and got upset when he unmasked got within 20cm of his face.
Oh and the absolute bullshit conspiracy theories he spouted about Daniel Andrews while telling me he wishes we had an Australian Trump to “get rid of all the corrupt pedos in Australian Politics”.
Oh how I wish we had some IT savvy legislators who would make good law, since this won’t happen I would settle for them doing nothing. This sort of ineffectual crap serves the sole purpose of creating opportunities for these corporations to further entrench their hold over the internet. I am watching on with dread to find out how much data is going directly to Palantir from this mess.
Calling everyone who disagrees with you a brainrotted cooker will not win you friends.
I only apply that judgement where it fits. If you are an anti-vaxxer I don’t need you as a friend. If you tell everyone who will listen that Daniel Andrews is a paedophile based on rumours that apparently started on cairnsnews.org, I don’t need you as a friend. If you think Port Arthur was a false flag to take away your guns I don’t need you as a friend. If you think the lazy botched mess that is this legislation has more to do with protecting kids than getting us used to handing over our ID or biometrics to whichever large company asks for it I don’t need you as a friend.
I called my member and asked who will pay for the damage that this could cause in the event of massive data breaches and was told that the eSafety Commissioner was empowered to hand out fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars per person affected by breaches… Why is Discord not trying to figure out how to pay tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in fines? Because the government doesn’t care and Comissioner Grant is too busy flying around the world doing a victory lap to bother with trivial details like protecting the people she is selling out for her pet project.
eureka@aussie.zone 2 days ago
These places still exist, although admittedly they’re further from the spotlight and many were sapped by mainstream general-purpose platforms. But there are thousands of them around for those who care to look. I don’t even think it’s a stretch to say we’re on one, community hosted by Aussies for Aussies.